


magic doesn't come from sunshine and rainbows

by alekszova



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), The Magicians (TV)
Genre: ..? do i know what light angst even is? idk. only time will tell, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crossover, First Kiss, Light Angst, M/M, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 02:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20631674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: DBH Rarepairs Week: Day 5 - Crossover | The MagiciansAs first years, Connor and Gavin must go through three different trials to continue their training at Brakebills University as magicians. The first two tasks where easy, relying on intelligence and loopholes, but the last one, the one where they need to divulge their biggest secret or darkest thoughts, is much more difficult. And Gavin really wishes he was paired with anyone other than Connor.





	magic doesn't come from sunshine and rainbows

**Author's Note:**

> “You must bare yourself in the presence of another magical adept and expose your highest governing internal circumstance, which is to say, your utmost truth. You have till midnight.”

They were the only two left. It’s the only reason they get paired up—him and Connor. He would’ve preferred someone else. Anyone else. But he supposes it worked out this way for a reason. To let his deepest, darkest secret out into the open, it would work better if it was someone Gavin barely trusted, maybe, in some fucked up way.

The last few days have been difficult, and this is only adding to the stress. Him and Connor never got along. Not since the first day of school and not now. Connor so smart, so intelligent, working so easily, so carelessly. He’s always bent over a book but it never seems like he’s taking notes. Like all of it just sinks into his head and there aren’t the countless hours of studying, the tired nights, the coffee intake double or triple what is probably healthy.

Gavin works as hard as he possibly can to stay here, and it’s never enough. Connor gets the hang of things quickly, showing off on the first day of school with spells that nobody else has even heard of, let alone mastered enough to make delicate displays of light that move and dance in the form of a dog's face.

He's used to not being as good as he expected. Eli is better at everything—taking all the credit, graduating early, ending up at Brakebills earlier than anyone else. Breaking what people thought they knew about magic.

Eli is gone now, though, and coming here was supposed to be a fresh start. He changed his name and did his best so people wouldn't make the connections. He has wards up, ink embedded in his skin that subtly change his appearance as others see it. His hair is a little bit lighter, his eyes shifting between different shades than the bright blue of Elijah's. He even has perfect vision from one of the spells inked onto his arm. No need for the glasses that always made the resemblance between them uncanny. They have different mothers, but it is barely a drop in their genetic code that makes them look like the half brothers they are. Things about their features that he only started to see differences in once he forced himself to try and distinguish his face from his father's, too.

It's not as if Gavin didn't expect competition here, though. He's aware of other more prestigious families having access to spells and knowledge like the kind Connor has. It isn't bloodlines that make them special. More magical blood doesn't attribute to anything more than providing a history to acquire more text and spells to dissect and practice.

He was never good enough to be given that access in his own family. His father made sure Eli spent everyday studying, and the books didn't always make it Gavin's way, and he did everything he could to combat that. Gavin was always expected to be good, even if he wasn’t expected to be the best. That job, no matter what, would always be given to Elijah.

  
  


“Ready?” Connor asks, his voice quiet but steady, waiting for him outside of the Physical Kids Cottage. Gavin doesn’t think he has the same fear for this as he does. Connor is too methodical, too exact. But for Gavin, it’s all too much. Being exposed to someone like this, especially someone like Connor—

He would give anything not to do this. Anything but leaving his spot at Brakebills empty.

“Ready,” he says anyway.

  
  


Connor has been waiting for this.

Not  _ this,  _ exactly, but still  _ this. _

He doesn’t want to strip his clothes off in front of Gavin. Not under these circumstances. Connor doesn’t want to bare his soul to a person that only seems to pass him by with annoyed looks and vague insults thrown his way. Never directed at him, but always  _ about  _ him. Always meant to be heard Connor finds them amusing. Harmless. Maybe it’s stupid, but he has seen the other side of Gavin and often it negated the cruelty of his words. Hunched over textbooks, using spells to help mend the broken wings of birds in the yard of the Physical Kids Cottage, keeping a watchful gaze during one of the many parties that get out of hand fast. Gavin is like a protector, never a participator. But he's good at acting like he is.

Connor has been waiting for this—a chance to see Gavin’s magic up close and personal. See what he can do. Talk to him without the pressure of a feud between them. Connor knows Gavin hates him for his talent in phosphoromancy and even more for being the top student in class. It isn’t a secret. Gavin’s scores are right behind his own, always falling just a little short. The difference is even with all the wards and spells to protect against cheating, people never want to believe someone like Gavin has the intelligence to get there on his own. Connor has heard the whispers about how Gavin has gotten his good grades, he just doesn't believe them. Rumors in a place crowded with high competition.

Still, Connor had offered to help him study once to try and get to know him and it was returned with nothing more than a sneer and a  _ fuck off  _ said loud enough that it grabbed the attention of everyone else in the room. He never wanted to hide his knowledge. He never wanted this to be a contest, but he knows that it is. It’s not that he wants to be the best, but that he  _ has  _ to. A life or death matter.

The two didn’t work together during the entirety of the trials. They sat at different tables during the first one, Connor decoding one of the spells encrypted in the old blue book. Managing to figure it out just before nine in the morning and just before Gavin did on his own, too. He might’ve managed it sooner, if he hadn’t continually looked up to see Gavin’s face, scrunched together in concentration, scribbling notes down, never taking his eyes off the page.

And they weren’t grouped together in the second trial, either. He had hoped. He had hoped, because he knew the four of them out in the woods were supposed to work together. Utilizing their different tools to complete each other’s tasks. Them all passing around their items—the rope, the net, the axe, the bow—to complete their tasks. Catch a fish, cut down a tree, bring a horse to the upperclassmen that are watching over them.

It would’ve been nice to have Gavin be forced to work with him instead of against him. He doesn’t like it when people are angry with him, looking at him like he shouldn’t be here when he knows he does. Connor has to stay. He  _ has _ to.

Getting paired up with Gavin on this trial isn’t what he wanted, but at least Gavin has to help him. At least they have to work together. Maybe tomorrow morning they can joke about this, about all of it. About the hood being pulled over their heads on the first night and the upperclassmen having their fun with pretending they were sacrificing them. Cutting the tension of getting kicked out of the university with jokes like those.

Connor tries to look on the bright side, but the way Gavin is looking at him, it is growing harder and harder to pretend that the resentment Gavin feels towards him isn’t making him angry with how undeserved it is.

  
  


“You have any alcohol?” Gavin asks.

“No,” Connor replies. “Should I have brought some?”

“It might make this easier.”

Connor smiles apologetically, “Sorry. I don’t have anything. And we don’t have much time or I'd go back.”

It's a lie, but not one that he thinks Gavin will call him on. He doesn't like to drink. He's seen it ruin too many lives.

“Right,” Gavin says. “Let’s get this over with.”

  
  


They chose a spot towards the edge of the forest, where the bushes and the trees grow thick. Gavin picked it, after walking with Connor along the paths for an hour before the sun started to set, their belongings weighing their bags down. He didn’t want to be seen. This is already embarrassing enough. It being Connor, it being what it is. He doesn’t want anyone else to see them, and he hasn’t researched enough spells to conceal them in some type of invincibility.

But when they reach the spot, Connor’s hands twist together. Quick movements and the dim light of the evening reflecting around them in a shimmering pattern of lines before dissolving.

“What did you do?” Gavin asks.

“Bent the light,” Connor replies, setting his things down. “Did you want people to watch us?”

_ Of course, _ he thinks. Of course, Connor knows how to do the one thing he wishes he could. He remembers Connor bending the light a few weeks ago in class, making part of his body disappear and for a brief moment, Gavin wondered if he could master that. Finally become the ghost everyone wishes he was.

“No.”

“Then you’re welcome,” Connor says, a small smile forming on his lips. Gavin hates how genuine it is. How no matter what, Connor seems to only get amusement out of Gavin’s meanness towards him, as though it is impossible to be offended by him. “It’ll hide us until midnight. There’s… no reason to keep it up after that.”

Right.

Once the clock strikes midnight, everything is over. If they haven’t completed the trial by then, they’ll be expelled.

It doesn’t sound like the most terrifying option, sometimes. Gavin can run. He can join the hedge witches, he can make his way from his family and start over. It wouldn’t be the first time. When Elijah was accepted to Brakebills early and proved that it wasn’t such a good idea to allow students so young, he ran away. All of the ink on his body is from the two years he was with them. Gaining each tattoo and spell quickly until they covered his skin like a blanket. Then his father found him, and then everything was back to what it was before.

A new child needing to be the best and brightest.

“Are you ready?” Connor asks again.

_ No. _

“Yeah.”

  
  


The butterflies fill up his insides as he sets the items down on the blanket he’s spread across the dirt. Gavin helps him assemble the ingredients, crushing them into a paste, reading off the pages in the books. The words mean little to the magic, mostly just directions that they pass back and forth when the next one takes over. A rhythm of trying to get this perfect.

They can’t mess it up. Too much is at stake.

But the further he gets into this, the more Connor questions how far he’s willing to go. Will he do this?  _ Can  _ he do this? In theory, it’s so easy. Strip naked, reveal his darkest secrets. It’s only two steps. He already knows what he needs to say to fill the requirement of the spell. Connor just doesn’t know if he can get the words out, if he would ever be able to get the words out to anyone, let alone Gavin.

He isn’t even worried about Gavin fulfilling his end of the deal, only his own side. Connor is too consumed by it to consider the other half.

“I should’ve brought something,” Connor says quietly, almost regretting the lack of influence he can put himself under. 

Gavin smiles, a small laugh caught fast as if he’s too scared of Connor hearing it. “No turning back now, right?”

He nods, setting the bowl off to the side. There’s only one thing left now.

  
  


“It could be a joke,” Connor says. “A prank, maybe.”

“I don’t think so,” Gavin replies.

“You use secrets magic before?”

“Yeah,” he says, pulling back. Retreating from Connor as much as he can. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“No?”

“No,” Gavin says, leaving it at that.

There’s no trickery to it. No loopholes. No way to get out of something like this. It is based on honesty and pure truth. There isn’t a way to avoid saying things he doesn’t want someone else to hear.

So he will, for the sake of wanting to stay here, at Brakebills. Preferable in every way. No overbearing father and no hedge witches trying to steal spells from each other with their conniving ways. He wouldn’t mind going back to them, but he sees the fear on Connor’s face, and he hates that he’s allowing himself to feel guilty at the thought of not caring if Connor fails this, but it would be a small victory, he thinks.

An amusing one, almost, to see the best and brightest at the bottom.

Gavin isn’t that cruel, though. He might be terrible and vicious, but he would never do that someone, not even Connor Stern.

  
  


“Next step,” Connor says quietly. “Ready?”

“Stop asking me if I’m ready.”

“Sorry,” he says, but he’s smiling and Gavin wants to shove him away, because he always smiles the same way. Soft and a little shy, so opposite of his behaviors with anything else. He wonders if Connor hates his smile and that’s why he always tries to hide it. Or maybe Gavin just wishes he didn’t have to be reminded of the sliver of attraction he feels towards him when Connor smiles like that.

He's cute—not that it changes anything. Gavin's hatred toward him is far more present than the rare fantasies he indulges in when he's alone.

“Don’t apologize.”

“Sorry,” Connor says again, but he’s tilting his head, his smile turning into a smirk. Saying it on purpose, just to make him angry, and Gavin is back to hating him again, surprised that he even had the brief moment of thinking Connor might not be so bad.

  
  


Connor stands, turning away from Gavin. It feels better this way, at least for part of it. Taking off his jacket, unbuttoning his shirt. He listens to the sound of Gavin undoing his belt and the soft thud of jeans falling to the ground beneath them. Connor kicks off his shoes, arms wanting to curl around himself, hide whatever he can, but it would be useless, and he’d feel so stupid. He won’t be able to keep hiding himself, why bother to start now? Still, he does. He tries his best.

When he turns back, his eyes fall on Gavin’s face and his gaze is returned. Both of their cheeks flushed, too embarrassed to look anywhere else other than forehead or nose. Connor concentrates on the scar there, his eyes only drifting when Gavin moves to pick up the bowl on the group.

“Ready?” Gavin asks.

“Oh, so you get to say it?”

“Shut up,” Gavin says. “Are you ready or not?”

“Not, but I don’t think it matters. We’re running out of time.”

“Right.”

Gavin’s fingers move the bowl. White, streaked with little bits of black, spots of soft blue. He coats his fingers evenly, reaching out to Connor’s face, dragging his thumbs down Connor’s cheeks. Like tears underneath his eyes, he thinks. He lingers there for a second, holding Connor’s face, his own twisting like he’s confused and he blinks for a moment before pulling away, resting his hands on Connor’s shoulders, dragging lines from his neck down.

Connor wonders if he can hear his heart beat. It’s so loud, so fast, he thinks he might be about to die. It’s like it’s trying its hardest to break his ribs and end this before his embarrassment can continue any further. How awful to die naked in the woods with Gavin Reed, though, when there is nothing sexual to at least balance out the humiliation of it. If he dies out here, Connor would prefer to at least die happy.

“Your turn,” Gavin whispers, and he hadn’t realized until now how quiet it really was. It’s the only time he thinks he’s ever heard Gavin talk this quietly. He is usually so loud, so boisterous, taking up as much as he can.

Connor takes the bowl from his hand, mirrors his design. Faux tears and careful lines on shoulders, parallel ones along the collarbones. He stays there for a moment, inspecting the tattoos and resting his hands against his skin.

And then he laughs, just a little, breaking their perfect silence and their torturous tension.

“What the fuck is your problem?”

“Nothing,” he says, his eyes settling on the tattoos. “Just—nothing.”

“Really?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever touched you before,” Connor says. “That’s all.”

“That’s not true,” Gavin replies. “A few weeks ago you bumped into me at a party. You spilled my drink.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“No?” Gavin asks.

Connor smiles, biting his bottom lip. He shakes his head, even though he can recall the moment perfectly. Tripping in his effort to get out of the way of one of the other students trying to set their glass on fire and stumbling backwards. Gavin’s right. He just didn’t count it because it wasn’t intentional.

_ This is. _

His hands move away from Gavin’s shoulders, reaching for the rope.

“I’m sorry,” Connor says. “About the drink. I can get you a replacement, if this doesn’t work out.”

“You really want to hang out with me at a bar?”

“No,” he shrugs. “It can be coffee if you’d prefer.”

Gavin shakes his head, letting Connor tie the rope around his wrist. The knots look loose, Connor thinks, but it doesn’t matter. They’re embedded with magic. They won’t come off, even if Gavin tries his hardest. They have to complete this task to free themselves. He waits as Gavin struggles to tie the matching rope around his own hands and then steps back from him, the silence settling in once more as the ropes tighten themselves around their hands, nearly cutting off the circulation.

  
  


“Who should go first?” Connor asks.

He doesn’t want to. He can feel his skin tingling where Connor touched him, and he doesn’t know if it’s because of the gentleness of his fingers on him or from the ingredients they used to make the paste to begin with. But it feels odd, and it makes his stomach twist with regret.

Gavin wonders how many other magical schools are out there, and if he could’ve run away to another state and been accepted at one. But he had to take a test to get here, and he didn’t even try to find the exams on his own. They found him, they wanted him.

So fucking stupid.

“We can start off with small secrets,” Connor says. “Work our way up.”

“Yeah? What’s your small secret?”

He shrugs, “I don’t know how to drive.”

“Really?”

“Cars scare me.”

“Why?”

Connor looks away, off to the trees, up to the sky above them, hidden by the leaves of the branches extended outwards, blocking out the stars and the moon.

“I was in an accident when I was a kid. My brother died.”

Gavin’s eyes move to Connor’s ropes, but they show know sign of moving. Not a deep enough secret, maybe not even considered one at all.

“I can’t drive either,” Gavin replies. “I’ve always… been too scared.”

Connor’s eyes come back to him, “About what?”

Losing control. Impulsively driving into a wall. Doing something stupid and reckless to end everything. He doesn’t want to say it out loud, so he does. He forces the words to form into a sentence he can manage, and he says it quietly, almost desperate that this can be over that quickly.

“I haven’t always… I don’t always have the will to live.”

“Oh,” Connor says, his face falling.

“Look,” Gavin says, cutting him off, not wanting this to turn into a pity party. His ropes are still tightly formed around his wrists, unmoving. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. What’s your other small secret?”

  
  


Connor watches him. He wants to press the topic but feels like he is on too thin of ice to do so. This is such a risky thing. He can’t imagine what it must be like with the others. Tina and North, trading their secrets when they have already passed so many back and forth. He wonders if Simon or Markus will finally admit their feelings for each other, and if it will be considered important enough that the test will accept their answers. Is it easier, with them? Knowing each other? Or is this somehow easier, standing opposite of someone who hates him?

He wishes he was paired with someone else now. He might not find it so awkward whenever his eyes move an inch away from Gavin’s face. He might feel okay in pressing that he hopes Gavin can get help. That he can understand, even, waking up on some mornings and not wanting to get out of bed and be human.

But he lets it go, filing it away as something to ask Gavin about later.

“I know you hate me,” Connor says. “I wish I could fix it.”

“Is that a secret?”

He shrugs. Maybe. He doesn’t know.

“I don’t think there’s a way to fix it, Connor.”

“No?” he asks quietly. “Why?”

“I’m competitive. And stubborn. I don’t… let things go.”

Connor steps forward, feet moving on their own accord. “You could try.”

“Try?”

“Yeah,” he says. “We could talk, sometime.”

“And you can help me with my studies because I’m so fucking stupid I can’t figure out basic spells on my own?”

“No—”

“I don’t need your help, Connor,” Gavin says. “I’m not as stupid as everyone keeps thinking I am.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid, Gavin.”

“Really?” he asks, disbelief coating his voice. “You wanted to help me study.”

“I wanted to talk to you,” Connor says. “I was trying to make up an excuse.”

Gavin shakes his head, looking away, “Whatever.”

_ “‘Whatever’?” _ Connor asks. “No. You can’t just—You can’t just shake me off, Gavin. I was trying to help you. I wanted to get to know you.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Why?”

“Because nobody ever wants to know me,” Gavin says.

“Nobody?”

  
  


Nobody.

“Nobody wants me around,” he says quietly. “And whenever they think they do, they realize it’s a mistake. Tina was my friend, before we came here. And then she met Markus and North and the others and now she barely talks to me. I know she’s a different discipline and our paths don’t always cross, but—”

He pauses, swallowing his words.

_ But it still hurts. _

“Gavin?”

“My mother abandoned me when I was three years old,” he says quietly. “My brother fucking left as soon as he got the chance. My stepmom killed herself. And I know people keep—people keep saying it wasn’t to get away from me, but it’s—”

It’s so hard to believe.

He sniffles, wishing he could wipe the tears from his eyes without ruining the careful streaks underneath them. He doesn’t know if it would break the spell or not. There is too much information in his head. Battle magic and unlocking spells and things Gavon doesn’t need to know but he does because he wants to be the best so somebody can finally tell him he did a good job and that all this hard work is worth it.

“Nobody wants me, Connor and it's not a fucking surprise. I'm a shitty person, I'm mean, right? I'm fucking stupid. Nobody knows that more than I do,” he says quietly. “So, no, I don’t believe you.”

  
  


Connor steps forward, his hands coming up to reach out to Gavin. It isn’t easy, but he manages it. Tipping Gavin’s chin up, leaning down and kissing him. It’s something small. It’s not the kind of kiss he would prefer, but it is difficult like this. The sudden reminder that he is entirely naked, that his hands aren’t free enough to hold his face the way he’d prefer. But it’s still a kiss.

Hands on his chest push him away. Flat, resting against him and pressing back gently. Not shoving him away, just freeing the space between them again, still letting Connor stand this close.

“Connor…”

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I just—”

“Wanted to make a stupid mistake?”

“No,” Connor says. “No. Not at all.”

_ I don’t believe you. _

The words float in the back of his head. Said seconds ago and incapable of being destroyed with just one short kiss. But he’s been wanting to kiss Gavin for a while now. He thinks ever since he saw Gavin fall asleep in the library, eyes closed and looking close to drooling across the pages.

An idiot, but not in the way that Gavin sees himself. More like a term of endearment.

Gavin’s hands move up, replicating the same movement he had done before. Cupping Connor’s face in his hands, thumbs dragging down his cheeks. They are off, just a little bit, tracing the lines of the streaks but not destroying them.

His hands are free, but Connor knew that before he stepped over here. They had been free early on when Gavin started talking, but the words kept spilling.

“Don’t be stupid,” Gavin says. “You don’t have to kiss me to make me feel better.”

“I’m not.”

Gavin turns away, sniffling again. He’s doing a good job at not crying, keeping the tears from overflowing but still right there on the edge.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, and I really would like to go out for coffee."

Gavin laughs a little, shaking his head, "Only if we pass this shitty fucking trial."

  
  


Gavin didn’t expect this. He didn’t expect Connor to be the one struggling with getting his secret out, but he should’ve. He should’ve known his impulsive and brash nature, his inability to keep his mouth shut, would put him as the one accidentally saying things without thinking them through. He just thought a secret like that would keep it all stitched together somehow.

They’re sitting on the blanket now. Two hours passing by and midnight closing in. Gavin pulled his briefs back on and Connor draped the blanket over his lap. They still stay as far apart as possible, but he keeps thinking about Connor’s lips on his and how stupid he is for being more concerned about what it means than Connor’s struggle to get his words out.

He has admitted a lot of things. Said as much as Gavin thought someone could, but it’s never what the spell is looking for.

His brother died when he was young. His mother is overbearing, like Gavin’s father. The pressure to be a good student. He thought Connor didn’t have to even try, but he does. He pores over materials every night like Gavin does. He has a notebook that’s been enchanted to write his summarized thoughts and notes down when he’s reading through the textbook. He wears glasses but not as often as he should since his eyesight isn't that affected by losing then, which Connor says like a joke, looking at his hands expectantly like they’ll finally be free from such a tiny thing like that, but there’s nothing.

He tells Gavin that his father died a few years ago, that he spent what little free time he had as a child running around in the woods behind his home and building a make-shift shelter to hide in and read the  _ Fillory and Further  _ books by himself. In the quiet where there isn’t the idea of being the best of the best. Just fictional stories and fictional worlds with their fictional people and fictional problems.

Connor even tells him about his first crush on a boy in middle school, who after a month or so caught on and is one of the only reasons Connor has ever felt guilty about his attraction to the same gender. Before that, it was just something that he felt. There wasn’t any shame. He didn’t tell anyone and he didn’t live in an environment that exposed him to the cruelty of the world regarding the matter. But the boy made fun of him, called him names, made it clear that he wasn’t  _ natural. _

The rope stays on, even when Connor cries and even when the tears leave tracks through the markings on his skin.

Gavin wants to hold his hand, but it’s difficult like this, so he settles on resting his fingers against the inside of Connor’s forearm, tracing a shape against the bare skin and telling him he’s sorry.

It isn’t enough, and Gavin can’t help but think about how unfair this is. If Connor gets kicked out of Brakebills for this—

He’s the best student they have, and he doesn’t think that extends just to first years. He thinks the only person that could be better than Connor is Elijah.

It isn’t fair, and he doesn’t know how to help him.

  
  


“I’m scared,” Connor says finally. The clock on his phone reads five minutes until midnight. “That I can’t do this. That they’ll kick me out.”

“So fuck Brakebills,” Gavin says. “Go somewhere else. Learn everything you can. You don’t need the school to do that.”

But Connor does, and he feels his insides twisting around the one thing he knows he needs to say but has been trying his best to avoid. He's been trading in other secrets in the hope he didn't have to give this one up. It was a stupid idea. Connor should've known better—this is the way the spell works. 

“It’s not that simple, Gavin,” he says quietly. “I have to stay.”

“Why?”

“I have to be here,” he whispers. “For him.”

“Your brother?” Gavin asks.

Connor nods slowly, wishing he could curl up into himself and hide away but it’s so difficult out here, despite the dark. He is still so exposed, so naked and stripped raw, like a layer of his skin has been peeled back and there is nothing but the tender redness that is never meant to be seen.

He hurts.

“He’s dead,” Connor says, and it is still difficult to say those words. “And he never got a chance to be a person. He never got a chance to live and make good friends and fall in love. He never got a chance to decide what he wanted to be. And now I—I have to be two people. I have to make up for it. I have to be smart enough for both of us. I have to succeed for both of us. I have to exist for him.”

“You have to exist for yourself, Connor.”

He shakes his head.

_ It’s not that simple. _

“If there was a way to bring him back, I would. I want to trade places with him all the time. He was better than me, you know? Quieter. He listened. He would’ve been a better choice. You probably wouldn’t have hated him.”

“Connor—” Gavin says. “I don’t hate you.”

He laughs, looking back to him, “You should. You were on the right track, you know.”

“Shut up,” he whispers. “Don’t say that.”

But it's true. Gavin should hate him.

“I killed him,” Connor whispers. “It’s my fault he’s dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“We—” he pauses. “We were arguing about which movie to go to. He wanted to see something else and it was our birthday and our mom would've let us see both but we left the house too late. And she decided to go with his pick because it started sooner. And—"

Gavin is silent, waiting.

"I was so annoyed," Connor whispers. "I was throwing a tantrum and thinking about how much I didn't want to see his stupid movie. How I wished we'd get hit by a bus or a train just so we didn't have to see it. And then we were. The car crashed and—"

“Connor, it wasn’t your fault.”

“It was.”

Gavin doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand. Connor felt the magic in his body when it happened. He remembers them stopped at a train crossing. He remembers the crunch of the bus as it slammed into the back of their car and pushed them forward into the tracks.

He remembers waking up in a hospital, being told he was lucky to be alive.

“It’s my fault he’s dead, Gavin,” he repeats, and he feels the ropes slide off his hands. The loosening of them enough that they slip over his wrists at the angle they’re in, he can feel them fall against his thighs, rough and coarse fibers irritating his skin. "I caused the crash."

“Connor—”

He moves to stand up before realizing there is nowhere to run. His clothes are set aside neatly, but it’ll take too long to put them on and get away, and Gavin is reaching for him anyway, rooting him to the spot, arms wrapping around his neck, holding onto him.

He can hear the sound of the clock tower chiming in the distance, ringing out that it’s midnight, and Gavin is hugging him and everything inside of his body hurts in a way that feels like his bones are breaking and twisting and not quite right.

“It’s not your fault,” Gavin whispers. "You were a kid."

But it is—Connor knows that it is, and he knows that this must’ve been how Gavin felt a few hours ago. When he tried to show that he  _ did _ want to get to know Gavin beyond their small encounters, that he wanted him in his life, that he was genuine in his advances, but he hugs Gavin back and he holds onto him, and he hopes that maybe Gavin is right, even if he knows it isn't true. Connor killed his brother, whether or not he had control of his magic doesn't matter.

How impossible it is to believe something when it contradicts one’s highest governing internal circumstance. How stupid to believe it could ever be easy.


End file.
